Floodgates Open For Shameless Cowards Panting For Trump
The latest shameful cowards who once despised trump but have been reborn into trump acolytes include William Barr, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Kevin McCarthy, Chris Sununu, Marco Rubio, Rand Paul and Kayleigh McEnany.
Expect many, if not all of these turncoat members of the 2024 hall of shame to resurface in high administrative posts if trump win’s reelection. Hypocrisy pays.
These modern scaredy cats bring to mind such historically terrified figures as William Hull, Marc Anthony, Saddam Hussein, George McClellan and Francesco Schettino.
Hull is most widely remembered as the War of 1812 general who surrendered Fort Detroit to the British on August 16, 1812, following the Siege of Detroit. Hull dropped his sword without a fight in the false belief that he was surrounded by native American warriors. After the battle, Hull was court-martialed, convicted, and sentenced to death, but was pardoned by President James Madison.
At the 31 B.C. Battle of Actium, off the western coast of Greece, Roman leader Octavian won a decisive victory against the forces of Roman Mark Antony and Cleopatra, queen of Egypt. Before their forces suffered final defeat, Antony and Cleopatra saved their own necks, broke though the enemy lines and fled to Egypt, where they committed suicide the following year.
The hated Saddam Hussein sent hundreds of thousands of men into battle in three wars, yet when faced with death, he surrendered to American forces from his spider hole to save his own skin.
Gen. George B McClellan was Commanding General of the Army from November 1861 to March 1862 when President Lincoln removed him from command. McClellan fell from grace because he failed to pursue Gen. Robert E. Lee’s forces following the tactically inconclusive but strategic Union victory at Antietam, Maryland.
Francesco Schettino was captain of the Costa Concordia cruise ship when it capsized and sank on Jan. 13, 2012, off the Tuscan island of Giglio, leading to the deaths of 32 people. Schettino abandoned ship before the passengers and crew and was later sentenced to 16 years in prison for his cowardly acts in the tragedy. Schettino was dubbed “Captain Coward” after he insisted that he had not abandoned ship but had slipped off the Costa Concordia as it rolled over, falling on to a lifeboat which carried him ashore against his wishes.
Ernest Hemingway, Theodore Roosevelt and Fyodor Dostoyevsky explained the nature of cowards.
In his novel, “For Whom the Bell Tolls,’’ Hemingway wrote that the major character, Elias Thorne, “was just a coward and that was the worst luck any many could have.”
President Theodore Roosevelt said, “We despise and abhor the bully, the brawler, the oppressor, whether in private or public life, but we despise no less the coward and the voluptuary. No man is worth calling a man who will not fight rather than submit to infamy or see those that are dear to him suffer wrong.”
The great Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in “Notes from Underground,” wrote that cowardice is an indelible part of the human condition.
“Every decent man of our age must be a coward and a slave. That is his normal condition. Of that I am firmly persuaded. He is made and constructed to that very end. And not only at the present time owing to some casual circumstance, but always, at all times, a decent man is bound to be a coward and a slave,” Dostoyevsky wrote.
Just two years ago, in 2022, Barr had only harsh words for trump. Barr had resigned as trump’s Attorney General and testified before the House Select Committee studying the January 6 attack on the Capitol by trump supporters. Barr said that trump never gave “an indication of interest in what the actual facts were,” and that trump’s claims of election fraud were “bullshit” and showed that he had “become detached from reality if he really believes this stuff.”
Barr commented after trump was indicted last year for stealing and hiding top secret documents. He described trump’s behavior as “contumacious,” which he defined as “a willful violation that was effectively flipping the bird at the government.”
Barr described trump as a “petty man” who would rather lose a football game “if it allowed him to indulge some vengeance or some feeling or getting even with another person. He would put his own satisfaction ahead of winning the damn game.”
In his book, “One Thing After Another; Memoirs of an Attorney General,” Barr wrote that trump “has shown he has neither the temperament nor persuasive powers to provide the kind of positive leadership that is needed.”
Toward the end of the trump administration, Barr wrote, trump “stopped listening to his advisers, became manic and unreasonable, and was off the rails. He surrounded himself with sycophants, including many whack jobs from outside the government, who fed him a steady diet of comforting but unsupported conspiracy theories.”
In February,Barr said that voting for trump is “outright national suicide.” In February he called Trump a “consummate narcissist” not unlike “a defiant 9-year-old kid who’s always pushing the glass toward the edge of the table.”
Most recently, Barr has felt the wind change and abandoned his harshest criticisms far behind in supporting trump.
“I’ve said all along given two bad choices, I think it’s my duty to pick the person I think would do the least harm to the country,” Barr said. “And in my mind, I will vote the Republican ticket. I think the real danger to the country — the real danger to democracy, as I say — is the progressive agenda. Trump may be playing Russian roulette, but a continuation of the Biden administration is national suicide in my opinion.”
McCarthy, the former House Speaker, was honest and strong in his reaction on the day of the Capitol riot.
“The violence, destruction, and chaos we saw earlier was unacceptable, undemocratic, and un-American. The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said. “It was the saddest day I have ever had as serving as a member of this institution.”
A week later McCarthy ratcheted up his words and said trump was not “free from fault.”
“The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters,” McCarthy said. “He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump, accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President-elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term.”
During the House hearing, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., asked McCarthy if he was considering asking trump to resign.
“I’m seriously thinking of having that conversation (about resigning) with him tonight. I haven’t talked to him in a couple days. From what I know of him, I mean, you guys all know him too. Do you think he’d ever back away. But what I think I’m gonna do is I’m gonna call him,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy never had the conversation about trump’s resignation and instead, has come crawling back to support the man who he said should “share responsibility” for the attack on the Capitol.
McEnany was trump’s fourth press secretary, known as one of his most loyal aides and staunch defenders. But during trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, McEnany was not in the trump camps and called him a “showman” whose comments about Mexicans were “racist” and that it was “unfortunate” and “inauthentic” to call trump a Republican.
McEnany later got behind trump’s 2016 campaign and after he lost the 2020 election, she became a Fox News contributor.
“I want my daughter to grow up in Donald J. Trump’s America,” McEnany said on Aug. 26, 2020.
During the 2016 Republican presidential primary debate, trump labeled Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., as “Little Marco” and Rubio shot back questioning trump’s manhood by noting the size of his hands. He raised the issue of Trump University, the bankrupt trump program that was sued numerous times and that Rubio dismissed as a “fake university.”
Rubio referred to the “pattern” of violence at trump rallies as a sign that America is regressing to an uglier time. He said trump claimed to oppose Obamacare but had no plan to replace it. Rubio also called for trump to release his tax returns, while trump stonewalled and claimed incorrectly that he couldn’t because he was being audited.
Rubio attacked trump for his immigration comments, noting that trump hired undocumented workers at his projects.
“If he builds the wall the way he built Trump Towers, he’ll be using illegal immigrant labor to do it,” Rubio said of trump, referring to trump’s proposal to build a wall along the border with Mexico. Eight years ago, Rubio slammed Trump as “erratic” and a “con man” who had “no ideas of any substance.”
But on the eve of the 2024 Iowa GOP caucuses, Rubio sang a different song as he explained how he had come around to formally endorse the four-times-indicted former president’s 2024 campaign.
“When Trump was in WH I achieved major policies I had worked on for years (like expanded Child Tax Credit & tough sanctions on regime in Cuba & Venezuela) because we had a President who didn’t cave to special interests or let bureaucrats block us,” Rubio said. “I support Trump because that kind of leadership is the ONLY way we will get the extraordinary actions needed to fix the disaster Biden has created.”
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., briefly ran in the 2016 GOP presidential primary. On Jan. 27, 2016, Paul said the “IQ of the debate went up” after trump announced he was skipping the upcoming Fox News debate. Paul also called trump a “delusional narcissist.”
“The IQ of the debate went up a couple dozen points, I would say,” Paul said. “He thinks he’s already elected himself king. I say, good riddance. We’re going to have a much better debate.”
Earlier this year, Paul tore into trump for endorsing former House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Rogers’s, R-Mich., bid for Senate, slamming the former congressman as the “worst Deep State candidate this cycle.”
But in recent weeks, Paul has seen the trump light, one time saying he was proud to work with the president to promote policies that benefit Kentucky. While Paul hasn’t officially endorsed, it seems clear who he will back.
In July 2015, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., was a presidential candidate, when he called trump a “jackass” for saying that Graham’s close friend, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., was “not a war hero.” Trump took his well-traveled low road and called Graham an “idiot” and revealed Graham’s personal cellphone number at a campaign rally, asking people to call Graham.
In December 2015, trump called for a ban on Muslims entering the United States. Graham called trump a “race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot … He doesn’t represent my [Republican] party … I don’t think he has a clue about anything … He is empowering radical Islam … You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell. I’d rather lose without Donald Trump than try to win with him.”
In the 2016 presidential election, Graham voted for independent candidate Evan McMullin.
Graham seemed to make his allegiance clear on the evening of Jan. 6, when just hours after the insurrection, the senator took to the floor and declared, “Count me out” and “Enough is enough.”
Six months later, Graham turned acrobat and clarified comments that he said had been misunderstood. He danced around the floor over his return to the trump fold and explained in clearly muddy fashion.
“That was taken as, ‘I’m out, count me out,’ that somehow, you know, that I’m done with the president,” he said. “No! What I was trying to say to my colleagues and to the country was, ‘This process has come to a conclusion.’ The president had access to the courts. He was able to make his case to state legislators through hearings. He was disappointed he fell short. It didn’t work out. It was over for me.”
Earlier this year, Gov. Chris Sununu, R-N.H., backed former UN ambassador and South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley for president. Sununu said trump “absolutely contributed” to the Jan. 6 insurrection and that trump’s efforts to overturn the claim the 2020 election were rigged and “absolutely terrible.”
Sununu said trump was “not a real Republican,” had “no energy” and “The guy can barely read a teleprompter right now. All the wind is behind … Nikki’s sails.”
“We’re tired of losing!” Sununu implored Haley supporters at a campaign event in Salem, N.H. and said that trump had wrongly predicted a red wave in 2018, 2020 and 2022.
“We lost in ’18 and ’20. We were gonna get that big red wave in ’22,” Sununu said. “Hey, Donald Trump, where the F is the red wave?”
In February, Sununu said he expected trump wouldn’t get the GOP nomination and that it was no loss because “a — holes come and go.”
But with a change of heart after Haley quit the race, Sununu said that nothing, not even felony convictions, would stop him from voting for trump because the economy, border security and “culture change” were more important.
“For me, it’s not about him (trump) as much as it is having a Republican administration — Republican secretaries, Republican rules…” said Sununu who minimized trump’s felony charges as “reality television” and “politics.”
Those who ostensibly serve the public should heed the words of writers and poets, like Ehsan Sehgal who wrote, “The coward takes refuge in lies since such ones always run away from the truth.”
The author and therapist, Craig D. Lounsbrough, reminded that “If you are a leader who fears the truth so much so that you have to legislate a lie, the truth is that you’re a coward in a suit who votes out of fear.”
And there were the words of Rose Wynters, author of “My Wolf Cowboy,” now remarked, “You, sir, are not only a selfish asshole, but you’re a coward. You didn’t have the balls to stand and fight for what was yours, instead you chose to flee and force others into a fight that wasn’t even theirs to begin with.”